Tears and Time
by Lady Moria
Summary: "Not in a thousand years..." Time ticks slowly by for Clarice....


Tears and Time  
  
This takes place after the Alternate ending of 'Hannibal' the movie, with references to the book.  
  
Author's note: This may be a little bit confusing to follow, but it is meant to follow a person's thought pattern over an extended period of time. I don't know if you all have ever stopped and concentrated on your thought patterns, but mine tends to be rather chaotic. So is this story.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own Hannibal or Clarice. I am making no profit. *******************  
  
She stands at the window, wondering and waiting. She has waited for five years, and she will continue to wait. She will wait for the Hours to cease their endless dance in front of her. She will wait for the seconds to stop ticking. She will wait for the millennia to pass.  
  
"Tell me, Clarice, would you ever say to me, "Stop. If you loved me, you'd stop?"  
  
"Not in a thousand years."  
  
Not in a thousand years.  
  
Why does a thousand years have to be so long? The expression of 'time' in and of itself is not such a tedious thing as waiting for it to tick by. Time, by its definition, is 'the idea, relation, or fact of continuous existence.' Continuous existence. Time is simplistic. Time is easy. But time.takes time.  
  
It has been five years.  
  
She realizes now that 'a thousand years' was too long to wait, would always be too long to wait. She knows this now, with still nine hundred and ninety- five years to go.  
  
Would she wait? The entirety of a thousand years of time, would she continue to wait? Absolutely. Time is insignificant to a woman who has made up her mind.  
  
She will wait, and soft tears will continue to fall over her blouse.  
  
She goes inside now, leaving the window and closing it. She sits on the chair and contemplates.  
  
She sits on her armchair, with a notebook in her hands. Its pages are not filled with symbols of astrophysics, nor are they filled with particle physics. These are merely words, a halfhearted attempt at passing the days. Teacups and time do not run through her mind, however, she is still doomed by wishful thinking. Clarice Starling does not want time to reverse; she wants it to speed up. She wants the thousand years to be over.  
  
She reflects that if Hannibal Lecter again stood in front of her, asking the same question, her answer would not have changed in it's meaning. However, the words she had chosen would have differed. She would have said, "No, I won't ask you to stop, Dr. Lecter. But I will ask you to do something else." And he would have said, "And what is that, Clarice?" She would have looked at him and smiled. And she would have answered. "Stay. If you loved me, you'd stay."  
  
But that is not what had happened.  
  
He had looked at her quizzically, and then lunged. She had not moved, and he had stolen a kiss and walked out of her life.  
  
So much for fairy tale endings.  
  
All that has led to this point. This endless waiting game she now calls her existence.  
  
He had once said he would never call upon her. He had broken that promise once.  
  
She feels he will not break it again, not yet, anyway.  
  
She will wait for his coming with eagerness, but within herself she knows he will not come.  
  
It has only been five years.  
  
She'll have to wait.  
  
And wait she will.  
  
All these thoughts and reflections and half-felt dreams go into her pad of paper. Casting it aside for the moment, she stands.  
  
She looks out the window again, even though she knows it is useless. She does not even hope anymore, she just looks to pass the time.  
  
She has all the time in the world now.  
  
"Dr. Lecter, we don't have the time for any of that now."  
  
"I do. I have oodles."  
  
That had not been his response to her comment, but she knows he had said it as one point or another.  
  
Oddly enough, she cannot remember what his response to her had been. That does not matter to her now. She knows she can always listen to the tapes of their conversations again. She has all the time in the world..  
  
After the incident at the Chesapeake, the fellows at the F.B. I. had not bothered to reinstate her, which was just as well. She knows she would have resigned anyway.  
  
She now has a job as a computer designer, working mainly in the replication of engine sounds. She no longer cares that her job is meaningless, that it will do nothing to boost truth, justice or the American way.  
  
What did any of those get her? A gunpowder burn on her cheek and tainted articles in numerous tabloids. That's all.  
  
What did those things take away? Everything. Her goals, her chance at a family, her ideas of having a happy, normal life, her self-esteem, her hopes, her cares, her sane mind, her career, her incorruptibility, her illusions of righteousness. Everything. Her life.  
  
You fall in love with the Bureau, but it doesn't fall in love with you.  
  
That no longer matters to her. Time matters now. The ever-present slow ticking of the seconds, the relentless change of the seasons, the passing of the Hours, the persistence of the days. All these are present in her mind now. Every day, every hour, every second of her existence is bent over the fact that a thousand years is a long time. And it has not yet passed.  
  
She no longer cares of trivial and carefree matters.  
  
Clarice hears her stomach grumble, but she does not feel the hunger. She eats now only because she knows she has to. There is no longer any pleasure in it. She no longer feels hunger, no longer feels thirst, or desire for sleep. She feels nothing. Food, drink, and sleep to her are now nothing more than meaningless chores. She does nothing now except out of necessity.  
  
Clarice cannot remember the last time she has spoken with another human being. She does not remember what her smile looks like, indeed, she no longer remembers how to smile. In any case, even if she remembered how, she could not see herself smile. She never looks in the mirror.  
  
All you would need for that, Clarice, is a mirror.  
  
Immediately following the Chesapeake incident, before she had even taken off the dress that Dr. Lecter had so painstakingly clothed her in, she had broken or smashed every mirror in her home. The pieces she had gathered and thrown away. The same treatment had befallen any glass or plastic surface in her home, barring the windows and the computer. She had kept those, as they were her only links to the outside world. Everything else, including her television and her clocks and watches, had been smashed and tossed away.  
  
She lives only in her house now. She no longer runs through the woods like the deer, no longer takes rips to the grocery store, no longer goes shopping at Union Station, she no longer goes to the post office, or the department store, or the office supply depot. She is in a shell.  
  
Someone who did not know her very well would think she had become agoraphobic.  
  
But that is not the case. Clarice does not fear the outside world. She has realized something she should have known from the start. She knows she is not for this world. Just as He is not for this world.  
  
People like him and people like her were not meant for the same plane of existence as other mortal creatures. They are not meant for this world. or to be more specific, this world is not meant for them.  
  
She knows this, and she has a suspicion that He knows it too. He knew it the moment she walked through that iron door in the asylum all those years ago. He knew it then, and she knows it now.  
  
But they cannot be together.  
  
The thousand years has not passed.  
  
Time will continue to tick slowly by, and she will continue to wait. And the tears will continue to fall on the sleeve of her shirt.  
  
Something moves. Clarice wakes. She does not know how long she has sleep, nor does she care. The growling noise in her stomach has long since been appeased, as has the burning in her throat. She knows instantly that something has changed.  
  
There is a pounding at the door. It is probably the mailman. She glances at the clock on her computer. It is one thirty in the morning. Not the mailman.  
  
She rises slowly to the door. Slowly because her muscles still sleep, not because she is wary. She has learned over the last five years that no one is out to get her, and even if there were, she would not care. Anything was allowed, so long as it helped to pass the time.  
  
She reaches the door. It opens. It closes.  
  
Definitely not the mailman.  
  
She glances again at the clock. According to the year, a thousand years has not yet passed.  
  
She opens the door again. He is still there. She allows Him to enter.  
  
The sound of her voice, unknown and foreign to her, breaks to silence. "Has it been a thousand years already?"  
  
He looks at her, and He smiles sadly. "Would you like it to have been, Clarice?"  
  
She can barely reply fast enough. "Yes, Dr. Lecter!"  
  
His smile widens and becomes gleeful. Without another word, He captures her mouth in a deep, passionate kiss. She replies in kind, question in her eyes but uncaring for the moment.  
  
They break apart. He sees the question in her eyes. "Then it has been a thousand years, Clarice.  
  
She is still confused. But then the words she could not remember earlier come rushing back to her.  
  
"We don't reckon time the same way, do we Clarice?"  
  
Had a thousand years passed? In reality, no. The 'continuous existence' was still ticking this world away. But these two are not for this world. So, for them, had a thousand years passed? Absolutely.  
  
The time-space continuum has been known to tear and break apart; perhaps it has done so now.  
  
The waiting for the relentless passing of the Hours is over. Why? It is simple.  
  
For these two, Time has stopped.  
  
FIN 


End file.
